Maybe I watch too much TV but there's a TV program here in the States called Cold Case and today when I was reading the ACOC Forum a name lept out at me from the past that made me want to dial the LAPD Cold Case lads. The name was Richard Pierce.
Back in the '70s (those days are extremely vague to me) I met this young hotshot lawyer in an upscale LA suburb called Encino. I was there to sell him car literature but all he wanted to do was show me his two 427 Cobras which he said he had ordered from the UK. He and a Chicago-based partner were paying somebody in LA to redo the interiors to they would be exactly like the Sixties CSX3000 cars and he planned to affix the SN (VIN) of real Cobras that had been crashed or were known to be destroyed.
(Why people want to show me their dishonest schemes I'll never know.)
But I digress. Only days after our meeting, Mr. Pierce, in true Los Angeles film noir style, caught a bullet, as they say, and promptly expired. I never heard if the case was solved, and if so, if a motive was established. It might have had nothing to do with cars. But if it wasn't solved, my question for serial number chasers is:
--did he successfully pass off the cars as originals so that there are five 427 Cobras out there that were from this batch?
--Was there ever any investigation of the car scam in connection with his untimely demise?
In the ACOC forum, what started me down the rabbit hole was a mention of his and his partner's name in connection with a small block 289. I only saw two big block cars at Mr. Pierce's residence so I perhaps poorly concluded that they were all going to be alike.
I haven't found out if there is a cold case squad in Los Angeles yet but the city is so broke they probably have a solitary individual dusting off the old files....and no doubt he has quite a backlog.
